Comment by Theolol

If you'll be doing this daily for ~3 months for the recipes, it's going to be a lot of leather! Getting through the previous tier was dreadful, but the demands of the new task ahead seem truly malevolent. I'll review what's available and how cost-efficiently it can get done. In order to avoid incomplete or misleading information and save you some trouble, I made a mostly complete breakdown and explanation of how much time and leather/scales it will all cost. The more practical info is highlighted so you can go straight to it. These values assume only 1 Leatherworker.

TLDR/BOTTOM-LINE TOTALS

DAYS: 82 days for every new research

Item breakdown

All Leather+Mail specs are 10 sets of 5 pieces each (=50) plus each non-set slot with Agility and Intellect versions: 3(Bracers/Belt/Boots) * 2(Leather/Mail) * 2(Agility/Intellect) = 12. Each of these has 1 alternative (with and without Spirit/Hit), hence 12*2=24. 50+24=74 Crafted Malevolent gear, with all variations being identical to the previous tier (Dreadful).

Now, 8 ilvl 553 belts and pants will also be available, making it 74+8=82 items to learn. Since Hardened Magnificent Hide are BoP, you need the full 21x for belts or 28x for pants from each single Leatherworker.

It greatly depends on how costly and available Magnificent Hide is on your server, but players can plan for it carefully so that they know what to expect and don't go into the inefficient extremes of having saved too much or too little.

It'll be a valuable material/research, by far the most expensive to make out of all the 5.4 profession CDs. Considering how it is both the most expensive as well as the most time-consuming to get all recipes for, a good deal of investment (and probably return) is to be expected.

Every other day you might have less leather available or something unusual happens and you need to do it differently. Here are the alternatives you can look up quickly so that you don't miss the CD.

70xExotic Leather (Magnificence of Leather/Magnificence of Scales + Magnificent Hide) => an effective option, provided you maintain enough leather/scales to use your old CD (can use scales you aren't using for anything else). The daily rate at which you use up leather/scales is going to increase 3.5x from 20x a day to around 70x! It's a good benchmark, right in the middle of these 3 sources, with one way costing 30x leather more, and another costing 30x leather less (but a lot slower).

40x (20x+20x) of either Exotic Leather or Prismatic Scale + 2 days (2x Magnificence of Leather/Magnificence of Scales) => if you want to invest the least you possibly can, and don't mind producing HALF as many of the Hardened, you can just use this CD every day and the Hardened every other day. Basically think of it as getting 0.5x Hardened per day instead of 1x, and ~6 months instead of ~3 for the recipes.

However, there's a chance that you get Magnificent Hide directly from a single tile! The rate is considered low and random but from my experience you can expect to get it at least once a week on average (using 16 tiles a day).

Get 4x more tiles from each lower level character: at level 85+ you can run LFD daily for Tillers rep!

You can use any spare Harmonies on any character for this. Check prices on your realm for all items, it can be very worthwhile to do the math. If a stack of leather/scales is going for less, get from the vendor what you can sell/trade for more mats.

Go further: use professions to get the most out of your Harmonies. Craft anything that gives you the best profit, so you can buy more leather. Items like the 2x Golden Lotus can be turned into gems/diamonds/flasks or potions.

Not many people seem to bother with it, but Wild Onyx Serpent drops Serpent's Cache which is like the other green bags, but is a 100% drop. This rare NPC is similar in stats to those at Vale of Eternal Blossoms, hits hard but no special abilities, it's only tricky to pull and takes longer to respawn.

Skinning:There's many tips out there but here's one I really like and haven't seen often:

Skin Stout Shaghorns at Skyrange! They're level 90 (higher chance for Mote of Harmony), and have it all: fast respawning packs and high drop rates. Skyrange Mushan drop scales too but they're few. If you're alone, you won't run out of packs as they keep respawning. Need to kite to avoid knockbacks and some monkey aggro, but this makes it a fun grind in my experience. If you really want to milk the... goats, go at it with Potion of Luck!

Comment by Wertguy

How do you get it?-From a pattern (Pattern: Hardened Magnificent Hide and Its Uses) that drops from mobs around Pandaria. I personally obtained mine from a Manifestation of Pride in Vale of Eternal Blossoms, but I am assuming that it is like the Magnificent Hide pattern.-It takes two Magnificent Hides and a daily cooldown to craft one of these.What does it make?-Item level 545 Leather and mail gear. -It makes belts and pants.-You learn how to make the gear from the same pattern (Pattern: Hardened Magnificent Hide and Its Uses) as well as the process of making the hides.What does it take to craft the gear?-21 Hardened Magnificent Hides for the belts and 28 for the pants.So no spirit?-Exactly! No Spirit of Harmony or spirit from disenchanting raid drops required!-That means that you just have to wait out the 21 days to make it, but no insanely expensive mats or personal grinds to get the gear that you want!Can I go buy these off the auction house?Unfortunately no, they are Bind on Pickup (the hides, not the gear), so you will have to wait 21 days for each piece of gear.

-Currently showing gear to be BoP as well, but I am sure that this has just been looked over and will be made BoE very soon. (Feel free to correct me with a reply if/ when this changes)

Comment by Saanth

This is the new version of the Magnificent Hide . It can be created once a day for two Magnificent Hide(Another comment on hear does the underlying math for you!])and will teach you one of the new recipes for PvP or PvE gear being added in patch 5.4. It can also be created as frequently as you like using a Spirit of War in addition to two Magnificent Hide Spirits of War are attainable by disenchanting raid gear from the Siege of Orgrimmar.

This pattern, and the patterns for other professions will be gained through Pandaria world drops. The highest rate is supposedly in the newly destroyed Vale and on the Timeless Isle.

Differing from Magnificent Hide, these will require no additional mats to make raid gear.There are 8 total patterns that use this, one belt and one pair of pants for each leather or mail wearer(Caster mail, Agi mail, Agi leather, Caster leather). The gear has an item level of 553, equivalent to normal Siege of Orgrimmar gear.Belts take 21, while pants take 28. So without using Spirits of War, it will take 3 and 4 weeks respectively to craft one of these.

Comment by Mairin

I can understand the BoP part for a "cheap" slightly higher ilvl item but what throws me is the current quantities. At 90ish total recipes to learn again presumably (unless you dual spec) after the first 49 for your 2 BoP pieces the excess is guaranteed "waste" (and in the case of rogue and hunter LW even an extra spec won't stop the 50ish% waste). Hopefully they'll either change it so you learn 2 recipes per discovery or have SOME kind of other use for the extra HMH even if its just a middle of the road one. Having them make a new leg armor wouldn't be a terrible idea since they can balance it with whatever amount of HMH they desire plus leatherworkers that don't wear leather/mail have something to do with their's.

edit. Marked my own post as out of date since the crafted items are now boe =)

Comment by DoINeedAName

Do the items that are created from this requires skill level 600 or 605?

Comment by neonjohn

I'm disappointed in some of the new crafted gear. The leather and mail spell gear is exactly the same, save their different armor types, and spirit + haste was a very interesting stat choice. Makes one glad his raid guild just dissolved. I guess Blizz's idea has been to make the reforge NPCs rich.

Comment by GreySage

If you have 2 leatherworkers then you can use both Magnificence of leather CD's to make 1 Hardened Hide a day. It saves a lot on mats and time.

Comment by WingedPanther

Can anyone explain to me why it is going to take us LW 3 to 4 WEEKS to be able to craft a SINGLE piece of gear?Why can these not be skinned from Timeless Isle animals? How am I expected to improve my gear with this stuff, so that I can raid, so that I can get the Spirits of War that I need to make the gear that I need to do the raids? There's no reason for this stuff to be BoP, and there's no reason for these to cost so much material. No mounts, ridiculously high crafting costs, and the only neat item we get to make is what? DRUMS! Drums that share effect with spells/effects from 5 other classes! WHY AM I STILL A LEATHERWORKER!

Comment by Brunnhilde

Howdy Folks,

I wouldn't normally post but if any of you are like me and convinced that Blizzard are being spiteful and not letting something drop I wanted to tell you that I got this pattern within 10 mins on the Saurfang server. I just went on my Hunter and did the Cooking Dailies (for shizzes and giggles as I don't really need to do them on my Hunter) and it dropped off a Hozen. I also learned the Snow Lily Britches when I learned Pattern: Hardened Magnificent Hide and Its Uses. So don't loose heart (even though the prospect of all that leather to learn all those patterns is more than daunting) it will drop :)

<3 Brunny

Comment by Zenakai

Not only is this impractical, most people that want these will most likely have tier from the Celestial bosses or normal kills before we can make them.

Also, they only stack to 20, when you need more than 20 to make anything.

I am doing the research solely to learn the new patterns, but I don't really expect to make anything with them.

Comment by chaodious

I got all 3 of my Magnificent hides drops in 2 consecutive days from stags in the Jade Forest.

Comment by WokkaD

Note : this also has the chance of teaching everything on the list of Magnificence of Leather / scales.

The number of days to learn all the patterns can be effectively halved.